My number is arguably 4. I once got help on my chemistry lab report from my granddad, who was Erdos-3, so yeah. It wasn't published, but I still say it counts.

A French prisoner was to be guillotined, but the man reading the charges though he was nobility and added a "de" to his name. He replied, "Je ne suis pas ici pour qu'on m'allonge, mais qu'on me raccourcisse."

I'm going to be a 5! Although not according to the Collaboration Distance Calculator. That has me as a 6. But searching coauthors of my coauthor shows that I'm a 5. I'm being published in the European Physical Journal Plus. A (not quite publication) draft is here.

jaap wrote:And I thought is was common knowledge that sums can only be taken over a countable number of things, and Sigma notation implies that. Summing over an uncountably infinite number of things is impossible, unless you use infinitesimals and that just results in integration.

That statement is itself a contradiction. Because infinity itself is uncountable.

The integers are countably infinite, which is what I meant with countable in the above. The reals are uncountably infinite. The latter means roughly speaking that you cannot use an index number xi to count off all the reals, even if you could count for an infinite amount of time.

Even if some time has passed I really need to say something: when you write in an environment that defines itself as mathematic, you have to be precise. "Infinitesimals" and "infinity itself" are, among others, NON precise mathematical concepts. Actually you can define sums of numbers, even infinite ones (cardinals or ordinals), over a set of indices of any nature, even uncountable (obviously it has to be a set, as defined for example with the Zermelo-Fraenkel-Choice axioms; you cannot define a sum over the paradoxical set of Russell, as far as I know). As a reference I suggest you read the first volume of N.Bourbaki work: "Set Theory", chapter III.

However, in order to be not so much off-topic, my Erdõs number is less or equal than 6.

QuigleyQ wrote:I'm too young (and also not Gauss) to have written any papers yet, but my girlfriend's grandfather has an Erdős number of 1. So I like to pretend I have a 3-point-something.

Cool!

Out of curiosity, do you mind if I ask you who your girlfriend's grandfather is/was?

Seymour Schuster. The papers were on graph theory, so I understood the first half-page. And that's it. :\ http://www.emis.de/classics/Erdos/cit/76705089.htm http://www.emis.de/classics/Erdos/cit/47905054.htm

cmacis wrote:But there can be only one 0, also no more 1s are possible. If you hunt out the 1s you might get a 2.

The people with Erdos numbers 1 and 2 are listed online. No one bothers with the 3s, because there are so many of us. (Sniff!)

Yes, I'm a 3 ... Erdos -> Nesetril -> Robin Thomas -> me.

Interestingly enough ... I had a cold when Erdos was vising UNL, and Earl Kramer asked whether I wanted to be introduced. I declined, deciding that it would probably not look good if I ended up being the person who gave Erdos a cold which killed him. (I saw him at Georgia Tech a couple of times, including once about a month before he died.

Ine of these times was when I had been invited to GT for graduate school, and Dad and I were checking out the place. When we walked by an office, Craig Tovey was explaining something to Erdos, who looked almost asleep. In fact, Dad later said that he wanted to yell out, "He's not paying attention to you! He's asleep!" Of course, I later told him who the almost-asleep guest was ...)

delooper -- we may or may not know each other. Of course, different people reveal different amounts of information about themselves on the internet, but I am a mathematician who's originally from British Columbia and did my BSc and PhD in that province.

skullturf wrote:delooper -- we may or may not know each other. Of course, different people reveal different amounts of information about themselves on the internet, but I am a mathematician who's originally from British Columbia and did my BSc and PhD in that province.

I don't yet have a published paper, but someone is writing a paper based on work I helped with, so if I wind up getting co-author credit on that then I will finally have a finite Erdos number (6, if I got it right)!

My first paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.6498. Local linear models can act as universal approximators even with randomly assigned (fixed) operating points, and an upper bound on the required number of models is given.

Just found out I'll be having a article I wrote years ago published soon. It would give me an Erdos number of 3. I had lost hope in the article ever being published so this is a surprise, but a nice one. I'll link it when it becomes available.

My parents are both biologists (the father, in particular, really sucks at math), but they both have Erdos numbers of 5 (through an article they both coauthored, and by several other paths for the father).I, however, despite being a mathematician, have no Erdos number, because I do not (yet) have any published papers (though my rather awful poetry had appeared in several published collections).

I was also one of the big participants in the hunt for 18th century people with finite Erdos numbers (that culminated in the result shown at the bottom of Erdos Number Project's "Paths to Erdos" page).

But you can publish with people who have published with people who have published with erdos, which would make your erdos number 3. And as soon as you collaborate with people, it will be very likely that you have a well defined erdos number. I agree that it has no deep meaning, but people will play these sorts of games, regardless of what the 'serious' position is.

Stumbled upon a number of 6 with 'Constraining axion photon coupling with massive stars'

If someone has a reasonable bacon number in the US and wants to make a short film, please PM me and I will buy you some bacon. Maybe we can just make the film about bacon, and math. And then maybe write a paper on it.